Wow..this was a short month! I feel I just finished writing last month´s, and the first one in the series, Educational Apps of the Month post. As I mentioned last time, most of the apps we´ve reviewed are for the iTunes apps platform just because that is what I use. However, Susan jumped in on the apps game and wrote a review of several Android apps for bilingual kids. Check it out.

Now on to our Educational Apps spotlight for February…

This month, TodoBebé–a leading global mom and family media company and creators of Viva La Famila (Univision)–launched a set of four apps, in Spanish and Portuguese, for children. These are all available only for the iPhone and iPad, but the Android versions are currently in development. They are:

This is your typical digital coloring book, but with the option of listening to the audio in Spanish or Portuguese. If you choose Aprende los Colores from the main menu, you will be taken to a color palette where your child can press on the color he likes and hear a voice say the name of the color and an object, with an accompanying picture, that represents it. If you choose Colorea, you’re taken to a vertical slide of fruits, animals and objects to paint. The images are simple and large enough for a toddler to be able to use. I love that you can brag about your pequeños digital art masterpiece by sending it via email, FB or Twitter. Go, flaunt it!

This apps name describes perfectly what children will do with it: listen (Oir) to sounds and learn (Aprender) about them. Sounds are divided into categories: transportation, animals, nature, home sounds, instruments and wild animals. The “Escuchar” game lets your kid press her finger on a figure and hear it make a sound. The other option, “Identificar”, reverses the play by making the sound first and asking her to press on the figure that makes that sound. Very simple, yet incredibly interactive. Just make sure you´re not expecting a quiet moment because your child will most likely start growling like a león!

Kids love seeing themselves on any screen. With TodoFoto you can easily add frames and seals to your child´s beaming face and share it with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter and email. The options for frames and seals is still very limited, but we hope to see more in future updates. It would be great if the kids could add stickers and bling to the frames themselves.

I had been looking exactly for an app like this since my daughter is starting to learn to write letters and numbers, as well as recognizing them. Leer+Escribir gives you two learning options: Concepts and Writing. With Concepts your child will hear a voice prompting them to press on the image that starts with the letter (or the number, if on that mode) on the screen. I wished that the voice pronounced the letter when prompting, but she says it after the child has identified the corresponding object. The illustrations are very clean, colorful and attractive for children.

On the Escribir game, children can learn how to trace letters and numbers.

I did find one more bilingual app that´s an extremely simple one to keep your younger toddlers entertained with safari animals:

I see this app in the hands of toddlers that don’t know how to use the touchscreen yet, but can be entertained by watching safari animals pop out while the background scrolls vertically. If they randomly touch the screen, they will get cute surprises. Make sure that you go to your devices main settings area to set this app to function in Spanish mode.

You´re next. Have you found any educational kids apps–iTunes or Android–that you´re loving? Please share with us!

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Alicia Maher was born in El Salvador and resides in Los Angeles CA since 1986. She learned to cook at a young age authentic Salvadoran food from her grandmother, great aunts, aunts and her Salvadoran friends. For almost thirty years Alicia has passionately carried and shared her country and ancestors’ culinary traditions with family and friends. In her cookbook Delicious El Salvador: 75 Authentic Recipes for Traditional Salvadoran Cooking, she sets out to preserve and teach El Salvador’s home cooking history, flavors and dishes to future generations. She is also the former owner of two full service bakeries in the Los Angeles area, and has taught private cooking classes for the last five years. Before moving to Southern California, Alicia lived in Israel and Washington, D.C. She graduated from UCLA in 1992 with a BA in Art History. Alicia has been married to Joseph since 1988; they are the parents of three sons. Delicious El Salvador: 75 Authentic Recipes for Traditional Salvadoran Cooking is her first book.